d fill with their breath and the music of heaven.

Bruno stood by, and let the innocent pageant pass, with its gold of
autumn foliage and its purples of crocus-like colchicum.

He heard their voices crying in the court: "We have got him--we have
brought him. Our Signa, who is going to be great!"

* * *

All life had been to him as the divining-rod of Aaron, blooming ever
afresh with magic flowers. Now that the flame of pain and passion burned
it up, and left a bare sear brittle bough, he could not understand.

Love is cruel as the grave.

The poet has embraced the universe in his visions, and heard harmony in
every sound, from deep calling through the darkest storm to deep, as
from the lightest leaf-dancing in the summer wind; he has found joy in
the simplest things, in the nest of a bird, in the wayside grass, in the
yellow sand, in the rods of the willow; the lowliest creeping life has
held its homily and solace, and in the hush of night he has lifted his
face to the stars, and thought that he communed with their Creator and
his own. Then--all in a moment--Love claims him, and there is no melody
anywhere save in one single human voice, there is no heaven for him save
on one human breast; when one face is turned from him there is darkness
on all the earth; when one life is lost--let the stars reel from their
courses and the world whirl and burn and perish like the moon; nothing
matters; when Love is dead there is no God.

* * *

Bruno lay down that night, but for an hour only. He could not sleep.

He rose before the sun was up, in the grey wintry break of day, while
the fog from the river rose like a white wall built up across the plain.

It is the season when the peasant has the least to do. Ploughing, and
sowing, and oil-pressing, all are past; there is little labour for man
or beast; there is only garden work for the vegetable market, and the
care of the sheep and cattle, where there are any. In large households,
where many brothers and sisters get round the oil lamp and munch roast
chestnuts and thrum a guitar, or tell ghost stories, these short empty
days are very well; sometimes there is a stranger lost coming over the
pinewoods, sometimes there is a snow-storm, and the sheep want seeing
to; sometimes there is the old roistering way of keeping Twelfth-night,
even on these lonely wind-torn heights; where the house is full and
merry, the short winter passes not so ver